The lion cannot guard himself from the toils, nor the fox from wolves. A Prince must therefore be a fox to discern toils, and a lion to drive off wolves. The modern-day term “Machiavellian” is used to describe deception, dishonesty, and cruelty to meet a goal. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli was written as a guide for autocrats on how to govern using means that were meant to deceive and manipulate a government’s constituency—to the extent of advocating the use of evil for political expediency. In this classic work, the end justifies the means reigns paramount to Machiavelli’s system of government.
Bitcoin was promised to be a liberating technology, a free market alternative to state-controlled money. But that promise was broken after a small group of insiders took over the project and fundamentally changed Bitcoin's design. Few people know the true history of Bitcoin and its original design due to years of heavy censorship, social media engineering, and tight information controls online. Hijacking Bitcoin destroys the most popular narratives that surround Bitcoin and sets the historical record straight. Roger Ver's passion and pain come through as he tells the story of a beloved project corrupted in front of his eyes. Written by one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry, this book is impossible to ignore. From the inside flap: Bitcoin has been captured and changed for the worse. That's the undeniable conclusion of Hijacking Bitcoin. Chocked full of history and inconvenient truths, this book goes on a myth-busting rampage against the most popular narratives that surround BTC. Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Is it supposed to be digital gold or digital cash? Did the original design really have scaling problems? Roger Ver addresses these questions head-on and provides uncomfortable answers. Roger Ver is the world's first investor in Bitcoin startups and has been a prominent name in the cryptocurrency industry since the beginning. Yet, as he confesses in the introduction, this book is not a love story. It's a devastating exposé of the corruption, propaganda, and centralization of power in Bitcoin.